Bigger, Better
Spine-tingling isn't the word that usually springs to mind after a Leah Stein Dance Company performance. Typically this introspective creator leads us through the silent beauty of a vacant lot or quietly rolls eggs back and forth between bare feet. But there was no other word for her magnificent Carmina Burana, premiering locally last weekend.
Choreographer and prime mover of this majestic production, Stein and her seven dancers performed with the 120-member Mendelssohn Club, augmented by two grand pianos, four percussionists with 25 instruments and a children's choir. The setting was the huge wedge-shaped Girard College Chapel, which combines art deco (Corinthian pilasters and classical moldings) with 30th Street Station marble public architecture.
The dancers tumbled, crawled and rappelled down walls to reach the raised performing area at the narrow end of the wedge. Dressed in loose floating draperies, they looked like they'd stepped off a Greek temple frieze. Atmospherically lit, they appeared first as huge shadows, which danced on the wall throughout, reinforcing the otherworldly mood.
Carl Orff's 20th-century cantata Carmina Burana is a wild spiral of music based on ribald 13th-century Latin poems. Stein's choreography rolled and arched with Orff's intricate, eerie blend of voice and instruments. Her movement perfectly entwined with the music and space. Dancing onstage with a huge chorus and lots of instruments is tricky, because the performers can look superimposed, even silly. This never happened. These dancers looked like part of the music, not decorations of it. Meanwhile the hypnotic music and pulse-shifting beat reverberated through the grand space. The magnificent Mendelssohn Club voices were joined by a chorus of children who added their thin clear tones to the vocal symphony and actually frolicked with the dancers.
Soloists Carol Chickering, Dana Wilson and Dimitrie Lazich were individually superb. Tenor Wilson raised goose bumps singing the shrill, strange "Olim Lacus Colueram" ("Lament of the Roast Swan"), a pitiful keening from the dead. These soloists simply walked into the performance space — just one more element of a unified whole. Chickering and Lazich's duet was particularly effective with their voices reaching across the moving dancers to find each other. All credit to Stein who personally dominated the performance every time her tall form floated into view.
Carmina Burana
Leah Stein Dance Company, Nov. 17,Girard College Chapel
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